Adding weight to earlier findings, a study of nearly 150,000 adults has found that eating too many red and processed meats raises a person's risk for colorectal cancer by up to 50%. Meanwhile, another study of 285,526 European women has found that eating lots of fruits and vegetables does not lower a woman's risk for breast cancer, refuting some earlier studies.

I've been a vegetarian for most of my life, which means that over the years I've been subjected to plenty of unsolicited opinions about my health and my decision to stop eating meat. There were epic battles with my grandmother, who grew up on a hog farm in Minnesota and believes eating animals is part of human nature. "It has to do with teeth," is her cryptic explanation. My other grandmother, a New Yorker with a New Age streak, insists that I need beef, chicken and fish even more than most people because of my blood type.

Harmony Farms is a small nondescript storefront on the endless commercial stretch that is Foothill Boulevard in La Crescenta. Within its immediate vicinity are an escrow company, a florist, a Goodwill donations center, a carwash and a bar called, whimsically enough, Up Th' Hill. Nothing that would hint at, say, the skinned carcass of a wild boar or a flash-frozen coil of rattlesnake. From the street, at 40 mph, Harmony Farms could be a granola- binned health food store or an organic fruit stand.

The headlines were certainly scary enough to turn readers into vegetarians: "Sausages and Bacon Up Bladder Cancer Risk" "My Bologna Has a First Name, It's C-A-N-C-E-R. " "Cold Cut Sandwiches: A Potentially Deadly Lunch. " Fortunately for meat eaters out there, the study that prompted this week's dire warnings wasn't quite as absolute as it was made to appear. For starters, studies linking red meat consumption to cancer aren't new. But this study, published online Monday by the journal Cancer, zeroed in on a specific culprit -- processed red meat -- and a particular body part -- the bladder.

LOMPOC, Calif. - A new beef vendor at the Santa Monica farmers market, Rancho San Julian is very likely the oldest continuously operated family farm in California, dating to 1816, when José de la Guerra began to raise meat for the presidio at Santa Barbara. In 1837, the governor of Alta California granted him title to the ranch, which has remained in his family for nine generations. It currently extends over 13,000 acres of grasslands and oak forest, roamed by cougars, bears and hawks, and home to 500 Angus cows and their calves.

Another study has found an association between eating meat and premature death, this time linking the consumption of bacon, sausage and other processed meats with cardiovascular disease and cancer in a study of nearly a half-million Europeans. "Overall, we estimate that 3% of premature deaths each year could be prevented if people ate less than 20 grams processed meat per day," Sabine Rohrmann of the University of Zurich, who led the study, said in a statement. (Twenty grams is about 0.7 ounces; a hot dog comes in at 50 to 70 grams or more, depending on the brand, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture website.)